A video program supplied through a television broadcast or package media of various types is produced in successive processing steps (workflow) such as planning of the video program, recording of a video/audio information (materials) necessary for constituting the video program, and editorial processing to construct a final video program by editing the recorded materials. The planning step is a step for planning and drafting what kind of video program should be produced, in which a program constitution and a program information are determined. The recording step is a step for recording the necessary materials to various recording media using an imaging device (for example, camera-incorporated VTR) based on the program constitution determined in the planning step. In the editing step, the necessary materials selected from the recorded materials are combined so that the final video program is formed.
In these steps, not only video and audio signals, but also various information about the video program and materials (hereinafter, referred to as metadata) are produced in the planning step. More specifically, the metadata (planning) such as information necessary for the constitution of the video program and the materials (performer, recording conditions and the like) are generated in the planning step.
In the step for recording the materials, the materials are recorded based on the metadata (planning) thus generated. In the step for recording the materials, additional information relating to the materials (an imaging time, an imaging place and an operator of the imaging device and the like) are automatically or manually produced and registered at a time point when the materials are obtained (a location where the materials are recorded). The additional information relating to the materials are stored in the recording medium in association with the materials.
The editing step comprises two steps, which are an off-line editing (rough editing) step for determining which part of the materials is used to constitute the video program and an on-line editing step for actually editing the materials based on an editing metadata such as an editing information (EDL: Edit Decision List) generated in the off-line editing step. The final video program is completed by the on-line editing step, and the various metadata generated during the production steps are somehow associated with the video program and the respective materials constituting the video program, and then registered and stored in database.
There is conventionally the following construction in a system as described above, wherein the materials such as the video and audio are recorded, edited and processed them to produce the video program and the completed video program is stored in relation to the foregoing metadata generated in the recording step in the program production steps and methods for generating and recording the metadata. In the following description, terms such as planning and research, which are originally used in the following description of the conventional constitution, are replaced with terms such as planning and recording used in the description of the present invention so as to unify the terms as used in the present invention.
First, the metadata for explaining the materials in detail is generated and inputted to the recording medium in the step for recording the materials. There are two kinds of metadata to be added to the materials in the recording step. A first data is a metadata previously determined in the planning step, such as starting time, finishing time and imaging site (geographical name), imaging person. The metadata is wirelessly transmitted to the imaging device. The imaging device temporarily memorizes the received metadata in a memory, reads the metadata from the memory when the materials are actually recorded, and records the recorded materials and the read metadata to the recording medium in association with each other.
A second data is metadata generated synchronously with the imaging operation and recorded in the recording medium. The second data includes a positional information (latitude, longitude and altitude) detected by the GPS (Global Positioning System), time information, geographical name of a recording site, information of an imaging equipment (equipment ID), camera setup information such as a lens information, UMID (Unique Material Identifier) for discriminating the materials, and the like.
The metadata recorded in the recording medium together with the materials in the recording step is utilized in the subsequent steps and stored in an archive in association with the materials. Thus, the conventional imaging device efficiently generates the metadata relating to the materials and records the metadata together with the materials in the recording medium. The metadata that can be set in the planning step (the first data described above) is previously inputted to the imaging device prior to the recording operation. The metadata that can be obtained only after the materials are acquired (the second data described above) is recorded synchronously with the material in the recording operation, so that the materials and the metadata relating to the materials are recorded in the recording medium when the recording operation is completed. The metadata for the materials is used as a metadata for, for example, searching the materials in the subsequent steps or in the archive.
See the Patent Literatures 1 and 2    Patent Literature 1: No. 2001-292410 of the Publication of the Unexamined Japanese Patent Applications    Patent Literature 2: No. 2000-92419 of the Publication of the Unexamined Japanese Patent Applications